{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,29]],"date-time":"2026-03-29T15:28:17Z","timestamp":1774798097207,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":44,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"19","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2020,10,1]],"date-time":"2020-10-01T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1601510400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["61901111, 61971130, and 61720106003"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["61901111, 61971130, and 61720106003"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"National Key R&amp;D Program of China","award":["2018YFB1801103"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2018YFB1801103"]}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100004608","name":"Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["BK20190331 and BK20160069"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["BK20190331 and BK20160069"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100004608","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Jiangsu Province Basic Research Project","award":["BK20192002"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["BK20192002"]}]},{"name":"Research Fund of National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory, Southeast University","award":["2019B02"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2019B02"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>In this work, we propose a satellite-aided permissionless consensus protocol for scalable space\u2013terrestrial blockchains. We design its working principle and workflow by taking full advantage of satellites for extensive coverage and ubiquitous connectivity. Based on the proposed protocol, we demonstrate how such a space\u2013terrestrial blockchain grows and evolves through several typical cases in the presence of adversarial nodes, user misbehavior, and transmission outage. Taking proof of work (PoW) as a benchmark, we assess the system security by considering both adversarial miners and possible colluding satellites. Then, we analyze the maximum blockchain throughput under network capacity limits and evaluate the impact of information propagation delay via a Markov model. Simulation results support that the proposed satellite-aided consensus protocol achieves higher throughput and exhibits greater scalability than PoW.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s20195616","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,10,1]],"date-time":"2020-10-01T09:04:12Z","timestamp":1601543052000},"page":"5616","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":17,"title":["Satellite-Aided Consensus Protocol for Scalable Blockchains"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"20","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-7033-395X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Xintong","family":"Ling","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China"},{"name":"The Purple Mountain Laboratories, Nanjing 210023, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Zheng","family":"Gao","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Yuwei","family":"Le","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-8600-1423","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Li","family":"You","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China"},{"name":"The Purple Mountain Laboratories, Nanjing 210023, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9783-5471","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jiaheng","family":"Wang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China"},{"name":"The Purple Mountain Laboratories, Nanjing 210023, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2649-2125","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Zhi","family":"Ding","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Davis, CA 95616 USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9107-6593","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Xiqi","family":"Gao","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China"},{"name":"The Purple Mountain Laboratories, Nanjing 210023, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,10,1]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"54","DOI":"10.1109\/MNET.001.1900159","article-title":"Hash Access: Trustworthy Grant-Free IoT Access Enabled by Blockchain Radio Access Networks","volume":"34","author":"Ling","year":"2020","journal-title":"IEEE Netw."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"133","DOI":"10.1109\/MNET.2019.1900002","article-title":"When Internet of Things Meets Blockchain: Challenges in Distributed Consensus","volume":"33","author":"Cao","year":"2019","journal-title":"IEEE Netw."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"9714","DOI":"10.1109\/ACCESS.2018.2890557","article-title":"Blockchain Radio Access Network (B-RAN): Towards Decentralized Secure Radio Access Paradigm","volume":"7","author":"Ling","year":"2019","journal-title":"IEEE Access"},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Ling, X., Wang, J., Le, Y., Ding, Z., and Gao, X. 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